UT report: Charge against Hall is legally ‘absurd’

HALL: A UT lawyer called it ‘absurd’ to accuse a man of a crime for sharing a document with his attorney.

By Jon Cassidy | Watchdog.org

HOUSTON – Legal counsel for the University of Texas System submitted a report Tuesday finding “no credible evidence” that Regent Wallace Hall violated a state law protecting confidential information or “any other state or federal law.”

Attorney Philip Hilder’s letter to a legislative committee investigating whether or not to recommend Hall’s impeachment came in response to a request by state Rep. Ferdinand “Trey” Fischer, who has accused Hall of breaking the law by showing his attorney e-mails regarding special treatment for certain applicants to the University of Texas.

“Those e-mails may not even be subject to FERPA (a federal student privacy law) given the purpose and content of the communication,” Hilder wrote.

Even if they are covered, Hilder wrote, “FERPA clearly allows for disclosure to ‘school officials,’” which include Hall, so long as they have a legitimate educational purpose.

“Regent Hall had a legitimate educational purpose for possessing the alleged FERPA email(s) because it/they raise concerns about possible favoritism in the U.T. Austin admissions process,” Hilder wrote. That alone “justified retaining the documents,” he wrote.

Hilder’s review found that “no one has ever been prosecuted for violating” the state law that Fischer accused Hall of breaking, and that “no appellate court has held that release of student records” violates that law, either.

The idea that it’s illegal to share records with your attorney in the face of prosecution or litigation is simply “absurd” under Texas law, Hilder wrote. If it were criminal to do so, you’d have defendants required to share documents with plaintiffs as part of discovery, but facing criminal charges for sharing them with their own attorneys, he wrote.

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Jon Cassidy is the Houston-based reporter for Watchdog.org. He worked for six years as a reporter and editor for The Orange County Register after beginning his career at The Hill, broken up by a few years in South America working as a translator and English teacher. His work has been published by the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, City Journal, The American Spectator, Reason, The Federalist, Human Events, the Dallas Morning News, the San Antonio Express-News, and other publications. He was awarded the 2014 Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship. He is best known for his work in bringing to light a far-reaching admissions scandal at The University of Texas. You can reach him at [email protected]